Charr
"This power is your birthright, my children. Take heed that it does not consume you..." ''-Vyth '''Under the Tyranny of a Red Sun' A realm of discard from the time of creation resides in the distant reaches of existence. An ignition of entropy burns with spite and scourges all things that lie within its grasping reach. In the guttural speech of those who yet possess able tongues, it is known as "Isk," the "Punishing Sun" to all that must endure the heat of its glow. And so it does, for the memory of all things, mete out punishment indiscriminately to all: the strong, the weak, the unworthy; none are beneath its interest. In the long-dark, power grows wild with neither intelligence nor rhythm. Isk radiates forth its chaotic energy in waves that impact and penetrate all they encounter. The intensity of its radiation varies from times of relative calm to great storms that wrack and erode its surroundings. A World Without Reason The foremost object of the Punishing Sun's fury is a scorched and battered stone. It revolves around the star as if a child desperately seeking the love of an indifferent parent. Perhaps of the sheer force from some great storm long ago, substance began to claw and gasp its way out of the dry soil to slither and stumble upon its surface. This fragile life suffered and died. So too did that which succeeded it until the forms began to change. Beneath the incandescence of the sky that had oppressed it for so long, the living things began to feed of the glow. They became engorged of its power and their bodies warped. Those who drank too deeply of the sun's power became so twisted that their forms failed, becoming gibbering masses of flesh or worse, experiencing the agony of becoming distorted beyond the capacity to live as the first lives had. These creatures moved across their world, multiplying, adapting and always changing under the ever-present sun. A few among the beasts became long-lived enough even to speak in strange languages of sound, scent and taste. One sound remains constant among all of them, a name given in forgotten times by a forgotten speaker, the name given to this rock upon which their spans have been sentenced, a syllable that sits resentfully in the mouth like ash that makes the tongue dry: Charr. There are multiple meanings of the word "Charr," but all follow a common theme: "The Ground," "The Rocks," "The Dirt," "The Ruin;" it is often in a negative connotation as the notion toward the land is generally that it seems to desire the deaths of everything in it. The Sum of a Madness If any being or deity bears responsibility for the muddled creation of Charr, such a being must surely have been stricken with a cruel insanity or cold indifference. The ever-shifting surface of Charr is made up of brightened hellscapes, treacherous rivers, jagged mountain ridges and hopeless expanses of jungle. Those with a mind to do so would find it a hopeless task to map it in its entirety, as the ground quakes and collides, the rivers change path as the rock splits and shapes new courses, mountains crumble and plants are growing and dying always that a place may be unrecognizable by the next year. Nothing remains constant for too long. Those that survive must adapt to the only constant being change. The surface of Charr is struck frequently by storms from the Punishing Sun. Terrible streams of energy smite the land, blasting open great fissures and running through the rock to saturate the ground with the warm glow of Isk. Any living thing near the point of impact is destroyed or imparted an unthinkable sum of power. These wounds in the flesh of Charr spew magma from its depths and pollute the life around them. Entirely new forms of life tend to rise from the wounds, most often succumbing to the power of that which wrought them. Only a few new lives survive their spontaneous generation, always stranger creatures than any before. Rampant Creations: The Inhabitants of Charr Mankind is tenacious, adaptive and ambitious. With their clumsy mastery over magics that tear holes in the very fabric of being, they have managed to reach out and people strange places far and wide across the planes. Their wide and hopeful grasp is perhaps one of their greatest strengths and their greatest failings, for it is all too often that their ambitions exceed their reach... There are no men on Charr. No empires dot its lands. Civilization is a hopeless dream to the wiser beasts of the savage world. In a long-gone age, men did make pilgrimage and stepped into the wild, traversing a breach between planes with plans to conquer this new world and bring with them the word of their gods. They build homes and monuments, they fended off the native beasts and they cultivated the rich, volcanic soil. It was long before they were witness to their folly. Their homes collapsed and crops died, still they remained resolved on maintaining their new home, defiantly rebuilding and reinforcing their works. Enduring all other trials, it was the Punishing Sun that was their instructor in misery. The colonists began to change. It was subtle at first, it started with paranoia and isolated murder. The first of them that drank too deeply of the red sun's power did not survive the change. The longer they remained, the sunlight, the water, the food, the very air, it engorged them. They ceased to be men any longer. Their minds slipped away with their bodies, they became beasts consumed with the wild nature so pervasive in their new home. The would-be empire became a silent ruins that the forests soon consumed. Seldom now, there are strange things that wander about, some with two arms and two legs, some with one head and two eyes, there might even be a twinge of reason left in its face, but it is no man. Beasts Abominations Serpents Great Old Ones Vyth (WORK IN PROGRESS)